There are many montages in THE KARATE KID: LEGENDS. So many montages. Training montages. Hanging out montages. More training montages. Montages of flashbacks with narration. Montages of montages of flashbacks. As irksome as it is, it has the virtue of symbolizing the raison-d’etre of this sequel to a sequel to a reboot of a remake. Rather than telling a measured story of overcoming doubts and fears during adolescence, the whole point here is to get to the combat finale between two kids who really, really hate each other. The rest is just so much fluff, filler, and montage to get us there. Is that final face-off good? Yes. Is it great? Well, as with so much else, it is predictable despite some slick moves by the Aramis Knight as the villain of the piece, and Ben Wang as the new Karate Kid.
That would be Li Fong, a kid happily studying kung fu under Shifu Han (Jackie Chan) to the distress of his doctor mother (Ming-Na Wen). Unable to keep her son away from the kung fu school Han runs, she takes a job at a New York hospital where Li can focus on his studies, and they can both escape the kung fu-related tragedy that has blighted their lives. Or in the case of this flick, a light form of blight. Of course it doesn’t work. After meeting cute with Mia (Sadie Stanley), whose ex-boxer father, Vincent (Joshua Jackson) runs the local pizza parlor, Li discovers the local karate dojo while running errands with Mia. He’s entranced. She’s worried, and rightly so. Her ex, Conor Day (Knight), has caught a glimpse of them through the dojo’s storefront window and reacted by punching out his sparring partner. Well, not punch, but the karate equivalent. Things escalate at the high school they all attend, leaving Li with a black eye and a tutor (Wyatt Oleff) whose character hook is that he is a nerd in a cardigan.
The story offers no surprises, no depth, nor anything resembling character development. These are stock characters played competently who fail to connect with us emotionally due to a script that fails to generate any real dramatic conflict. Or logic. One odd subplot involves Vincent trying to pay back a loan shark, who also runs the dojo, by climbing back into the ring. Does he go to a gym for training? Does he find a boxing coach? No, he consults with Li after watching him take on the loan shark’s henchman in a back alley. Are they adorable as Li puts the older man through his paces? Yep. So is replacing the iconic wax-on, wax-off with punching pizza dough and whirling it around. Adorable can only accomplish so much, though.
The romance is also adorable is as perfunctory as the rest of the plot elements. So is Han, who flies to New York after being ghosted by Li, leaving his school and its students to fend for itself and themselves. In short order, he’s decided to help Li train for the 5 Borough Challenge, which will pit him against Conor and win the money Vincent needs to get out of debt. Alas, the challenge is karate, not Kung Fu, but that doesn’t faze Han, who flies to California to recruit Daniel (Ralph Maccio), the once and future Karate Kid.
The best moments are the prologue in which some nice animation explains the connection between the Miyagi school of karate and the Han family’s kung fu. The screen time with Chan and Noriyuki “Pat” Morita have a genuine sweetness to them, and it’s just a shame that it’s all downhill from there. Not even Chan’s cuddly charm and gift for a zinger can help this plodding collection of hoary tropes and product placement. The good guys are as one-dimensional as the villains, though Knight’s perpetual and homicidal scowl has the sort of psychopath vibes, even when he’s smiling, that is more properly the idiom of a singularly disturbing horror film. The kind with body count that is measured in body parts and random organs strewn across the screen. As for Wang, he’s likable in an unselfconscious way that makes you wish he’d landed in a better film. He also knows how to make his character take a fall, the which he does often, and at the hands of friend and foe.
Harmless, forgettable, and relentlessly mediocre, THE KARATE KID: LEGENDS means well. It’s most striking effect, though, will make you crave a pizza. And maybe a revisit of the original.
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